Turns out, though, that Daddy loved his animal-face purse and hung it in a place of honor from the mantel, where it remains to this day. Victor had won my father’s respect, and all it had taken was a dead-animal backpack. I wondered whether there was some sort of secret combination that I could try that would make Victor’s parents accept me so willingly. It wasn’t really that they disliked me. They just seemed uncomfortable around me. They were polite and kind but baffled. It was as if their son had unexpectedly shown up with a neck tattoo that read “MAKE ME SOME BASKETTI.” They seemed dumbfounded, and confused, and possibly even hurt, but they also seemed to realize it was too late to do anything about it, and so they hesitantly complimented the unaccountable neck tattoo that he’d asked to be his wife.
This was never more apparent than the day before our wedding, when Victor brought his mom and stepdad to my parents’ home so that they could meet and visit before the wedding. My mother and I had convinced my father to stay outside in his taxidermy shop until I’d had a chance to soothe them with a little booze and with reassurances that we were all actually quite normal, before bringing in my father. Unfortunately, as soon as Victor drove up with his parents, my father heard them and waved them all back toward the clearing behind the taxidermy shop, where he had started a very large fire. An enormous metal oil drum was in the middle of the fire, and was filled with a boiling liquid, the steam billowing my father’s gray hair as he stirred the barrel with a broom handle. This was the point when Victor should have waved, pretended that they couldn’t hear my father, and then quickly ushered his parents into our house, but instead he smiled nervously and helped his mother, whose elegant heels sank into the dirt as she weaved in and out of stray chickens. My father towered intimidatingly over Victor and his parents, but he welcomed them heartily with his booming voice, even as he continued to stir the boiling cauldron. My soon-to-be mother-in-law attempted small talk as she raised an eyebrow at the strange, bubbling liquid and asked shakily, “So, what are you cooking?” She leaned forward hesitantly, trying to smile. “Is it . . . stew?”
My father chuckled good-naturedly and smiled kindly and condescendingly, as one would to a small child, as he said, “Nope. Just boiling skulls.” Then he speared a still-meaty cow’s head with the broomstick to show it to her. Then the eyeball fell out of the cow’s head. It rolled toward them and stopped at my mother-in-law’s designer shoe as if it were attempting to look up her skirt. Then my future in-laws stumbled back to the car and left quickly. I would not see them again until the wedding.
Still, they did grit their teeth and gamely try to accept me into the family, as they hesitantly welcomed me into their lives with extreme trepidation and slow movements. They treated me with respect, but also with an equal amount of uneasiness, as if I’d brought with me a dangerous instability that threatened their very lives. It was only later, as I walked down the aisle on my wedding day, that I finally placed and recognized the look in Victor’s parents’ eyes and numbly realized that I’d seen that exact same look on Victor’s face once, long ago. It was then that I realized that I had become the unexpected bobcat in the room. And I knew exactly how terrified that damn bobcat had felt.
Married on the Fourth of July
Victor and I were married on the Fourth of July. It was a lot like the movie Born on the Fourth of July, except with fewer wheelchairs and Tom Cruise wasn’t there. Also, I’ve never actually seen Born on the Fourth of July, because it looks kind of depressing. But to be fair, I remember very little of my own wedding, so it’s entirely possible Tom Cruise was there and I’ve just forgotten. This will probably be very awkward the next (or first) time I meet Tom Cruise.
On the day of our wedding, Victor and I both had misgivings.